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Physicists Have Created the Brightest Light Ever Recorded (vice.com)
Jason Koebler writes: A group of physicists at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Extreme Light Laboratory announced Monday that they have created the brightest light ever produced on Earth using Diocles, one of the most powerful lasers in the United States. When this high intensity laser pulse, which is one billion times brighter than the surface of the sun, strikes the electron, it causes it to behave differently. By firing this laser at individual electrons, the researchers found that past a certain threshold, the brightness of light will actually change an object's appearance rather than simply making it brighter. The x-rays that are produced in this fashion have an extremely high amount of energy, and Umstadter and his colleagues think this could end up being applied in a number of ways. For starters, it could allow doctors to produce x-ray medical images on the nanoscale, which would allow them to detect tumors and other anomalies that regular x-rays might have missed. Moreover, it could also be used for more sophisticated x-ray scanning at airports and other security checkpoints.
According to this news article the athletic department makes money for the University, and pays about $16 million a year to the University.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Virtually all Nebraska football tickets sold by the athletic department are season tickets. However, in order to get many of the season tickets, there is a mandatory donation to the athletic department that is not subject to sales tax and, for federal taxes, is tax deductible for the donor. Only a portion of the cost of season tickets is subject to sales tax because the rest is treated as a donation. The University has every incentive to make the taxable portion of season ticket prices cheap while making the required donation large. That way, season ticket buyers get a larger tax deduction and some money that would go to sales tax goes directly to the athletic department. It's extremely shady.
The athletic department is still a state institution. The state of Nebraska should not be paying a head football coach far more than the governor or the University's chancellor. That's absurd.
I will say that athletics usually has a disproportionate amount of influence at any school that competes in college athletics at a high level. However, from what I've seen, it's particularly bad at Nebraska (and a few other schools) where football reigns supreme.
Perhaps some of those proceeds should go to improving academics rather than continuing to upgrade facilities and raise the salaries of coaches.